


reVisions

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe, Character Development, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-01-12
Updated: 2011-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-14 17:07:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/151544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if?</p><p>What if the timeline was not always what it seemed?</p><p>What if time can be shifted, reformed, and corrected?</p><p>Who were you before this all began?</p><p>And how did you become what you are?</p><p>You are more than a Guardian, after all. You are a person.</p><p>Or perhaps make that <i>were</i> a person...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Outlines

** > Enter Name. **

Your name is JAMES EGBERT, and your life thus far has been fairly good. There are others who would claim that you are surrounded by a certain aura of dire tragedy that borders on the comical, but you never stop smiling and you never stop believing despite it all. You have a wonderful son and a great job and things couldn't be better.

Your friends of course whisper about how it's all an act. After all, your beautiful wife and your loving mother both died in a tragic joke shop fire when your son was only two years old, but while you miss Elaine you choose not to dwell on it. Life is too great an adventure to dwell, after all, so instead you focus on raising John to be the best son he can be. Still, Elaine does haunt your life more than a little. Her influence is clear in the harlequin paintings all around your house; both she and your mother do love harlequins.

You know that Elaine wouldn't want you to be sad, so you smile instead. And today, you think as you adjust your tie, maybe you'll call Lillian after all. You know that Elaine would want you to move on, and you've always liked Lily. Maybe today is the day.

You adjust your fedora (a birthday gift from your dear friend Frank Finnegan) and straighten your tie. Today you go to work at the law firm that you've always told John is full of clowns. You smile to yourself as you think that really, it's only half a lie. Just look at your boss' hair. And the way that Frank acts sometimes.

You check your calendar. The astronomy conference gets out at seven, which leaves you plenty of time for a late dinner, and then to take Lily for a walk around the park. Yes sir, this evening's going to be a lovely one...

 ** > Who's this douchebag? **

Your name is AMBROSE MAXIMILLIAN STRIDER, and by god do you hate that name with a passion. You were born into a fairly well off middle class family in Texas, and all your life you wanted nothing more than to get the hell out. Luckily for you, your mom and dad were weird and neglectful hippies (ah, Austinites), and so they didn't care very much when you moved out of the house for college at the age of eighteen and actually took your eight year old brother with you. The only thing they said was that if you had any problems just send little Davey on home. Damn. You're not sure which is worse – Dave living with those stoners or Dave living with you. You're pretty sure it's the former, but you don't know. What you do know is that no matter what you do, your parents seem perfectly okay with it. They even know about your, ahem, [i]independent ventures[/i]. Fuck, your dad sends you a crate of Smuppets every year.

You just don't understand them.

You refuse to go by your full name. Your sort of friend sort of god it's complicated nevermind Lillian always calls you by that name and if you didn't a special understanding you'd flip the fuck out about it, but to be honest she makes it kind of cool. And even almost ironic. You can keep your tough guy image if you don't say a word, you guess.

Still, everybody else calls you Bro. Once you managed to get them to call you Maximum but that was in middle school and it was stupid anyway.

You are known by most everyone as an epic poseur, and you claim to only be a poseur ironically. Originally you adopted your tough guy rapper persona to tick off your middle class hippie parents, except of course your parents are fucking impossible to tick off. So then you decided to only do it ironically to make fun of other rich white guy rappers pretending to be inner city tough guys. Except you get the sneaking suspicion that the irony bit is lost on everyone you know.

Right now you're a senior in college (English major, minors in VMA and music; also minors in 'drinking' and 'the ladies' but who doesn't minor in that), and Dave is going to private middle school, and both of you are exactly the kind of pretentious douchewads who look like they're not trying and claim to not give a shit but get A's anyway. Dave only lives with you part time, and now when you think a little harder about it you think your parents only allow this crap so they could send him to that private school. A kind of a loop-hole. He gets to go back home to Austin on the weekends, which is just as well so that you can do crazy party type things and invite the ladies over without your brother getting underfoot. You've talked to your parents, and thanks to you having a shit ton of your own money (and no college loans, thank you scholarships) that they want Dave to keep going to that private school and to keep living with you. You're pretty sure that this has made Dave (and you) a bit touched in the head.

But you wouldn't want it any other way, and after four years you couldn't imagine not having the little bastard around.

 ** > Be the flighty broad. **

Your name is LILLIAN LALONDE. You were married to a gentleman named Robert Lalonde but the bastard divorced you, probably because he found out about an affair you had that you won't talk about but it's his own fault for being such a limp fish in bed. You got away with most of his money, all of your own money, and the only thing that you actually care about – Rose.

You had a brief fling with a young man nearly half your age, which was awkward for both of you; but now you've decided to be a bit more serious about all this. There's a widower you have your eye on, and you think maybe, just maybe, you can bring yourself to care for once. He'd be a good father, and God knows that Rose needs a good father in her life...

The truth is that you're really not cut out for the rich life (or so you think). You are actually a bit of a nerd – you loved wizards as a child, Lord of the Rings and The Once and Future King and all that, and eventually you became a scientist because science was the closest you could find to magic. You're a well known and talented astronomer and unlike most of your brethren you can actually afford your own observatory, thank you Robert. In the end, even the alcohol isn't what calms you – it's the gentle sweep of an orbital and the twinkling of distant starts.

Your specialty is an obscure one – asteroid hunting. Not many follow that path. But it's your hobby and you've named quite a few. In fact, a few have rather whimsical names, and they make you smile. Lalonde, of course; but also Egbert and Harley; Dave, Rose, Jade, John; and yes, even Strider, which you hope that Ambrose never finds out about. As if your relationship weren't awkward enough.

Some part of you likes to think that your work might someday save the Earth. If one could reach the meteor in time. If NASA weren't a bunch of wasteful idiots. If, if, if...

You don't need any funding, but you got it anyway, despite all your protests. You've since piped down and simply taken the money, but it still irks you just a little. You can take care of yourself. You always have. You always will. Still, the old man was so interested in your work and insisted on helping you out, and who are you to turn the fellow down?

For now, you watch the skies, martini glass in hand, and you hope that Rose understands that you do this out of love.

 ** > Yes. Hells fucking yes. **

Your name is HASS “THE FLAME” HARLEY, and god damn do you love ADVENTURE. When you were fifteen you lied to the army and went off to fight in the Second World War as an airman, flying against the Japs in the Pacific. Harrowing times, but you felt you were doing a good day, back when wars meant something and men were real men and women were real men and there was such a thing as good guys and bad guys, right and wrong. Or so you felt.

Shortly after the war you began investing in all sorts of things, first and foremost nuclear power and second in aviation and aeronautics. Part of you felt like you'd missed out, being genuinely too young and inexperienced when the war started to work at Los Alamos. Still, thanks to the Russians you never wanted for work, and through a series of clever investment schemes and pure hard work you managed to amass quite a fortune, which you then spent on all sorts of relief work in Africa, India, and the Middle East. You also did a little hunting back when it was still alright to do that sort of thing, but stopped when it became wiser to invest in things like clean energy and probiotic yoghurt.

You began to fund all kinds of other projects. You put some money into a law firm that specialized in patents for magicians, clowns, and other performers; you founded a scholarship fund for English majors; you began to fund a large project to catalog near-Earth asteroids. You had your fingers in all the pies, all of them. Every last goddamn pie.

Sometime in the nineties you became a little too old to keep flying around and doing that sort of thing. Your vision had gone, your old bones were a bit creaky, so, you being you, you bought an island on the Pacific Rim with an active volcano on it and built the most ridiculous house you could afford.

There, you rapidly became isolated from the world. You almost became a complete hermit, so completely alone in the world that you took to talking to the various dolls and mannequins you'd collected in your travels. Fortunately or unfortunately, fate seemed to have other plans for you, and when your young granddaughter was orphaned in a tragic accident you took her in. She never knew her parents, and you cared for her as best you could. You imagine she's growing up more than a little eccentric, but you wouldn't have it any other way.

 **James: reminisce about Elaine.**

You still keep her picture on your dresser to remind you to be strong, to go on, to care for John as best you can. You'll always love her and always miss her slightly gap-toothed smile. Her sister and her sister's husband died in the same fire, and all in all it was the worst day you could ever have imagined.

Still. You know that she's encouraging you. You put on your best tie and your best hat. Lillian will be in town soon, and you must simply look your best.

 ** > Lillian: go to meet James. **

You're in town for an astronomy conference. Why the hell they'd hold a conference in Washington State is completely beyond you, as you can never see any stars this way. Terrible idea, really. So you make the best of it.

James. James, safe and stable and steady and loving, and after your last parade of men either too rich or too young or too flighty he's... exactly what you want. Maybe what you wanted and needed all along.

You walk downtown and hold hands, and you drink as always a little too much wine and he drinks only a little and the furthest you get is a goodbye peck on the cheek but it's always so lovely to see him. Always.

 ** > Hass: call Lillian. **

In the morning, you call Lillian, and you ask her about her latest findings in regards to meteors. You've been collaborating on cataloging celestial phenomenon, and at this point you're a little too old to leave your island. She gives you the report on the conference – boring, boring boring – and you ask how James is instead.

She pauses, and says that he's quite well. You smile. It's good to know that your nephew is doing well. That he's finally moving on. You say that you think he'll be a good husband.

There's a heavy pause, and then she says something that almost makes you drop the phone. You ask her to repeat.

“There've been some new meteors that I've charted, Hass. I've sent you the data, and I'm reluctant to post the results yet. But you should take a look...”

 ** > ~~Ambrose Maximillian~~ Bro Strider: flip through GameBro.**

Dave just finished his latest post on his blog about how unbelievably shitty GameBro is, and in the same way that some people just can't not look at a car crash you can't not pick up the thing and take a gander. They're talking about some game named Sburb which of course they haven't played and of course they automatically say is shitty. You smirk. But then you find yourself curious.

You slide into your chair and go to the game company's web site.

 ** > James: think about what to get John for his birthday.**

You've already thought of a few things, but there's one more thing John asked for. Some newfangled computer game?

You guess it couldn't hurt.

 ** > Lillian: Chart the skies. **

This becomes an obsession for you. You purchase a new mainframe computer and begin to sleep in your lab, charting the path of the meteors you've begun to observe. Too many of them. And sometimes they're there and sometimes they're not and suddenly you start finding reports of them in every astrophysical journal you own.

Reports dating back years.

You don't remember these. You would have remembered them. Especially the ones you wrote.

This cannot be real. This cannot be happening. There are no craters in those locations. You remember. You _remember_.

So why are you afraid?


	2. Brainstorms

** > Hass: Back up a few years.**

It is a few years ago. More than a few, actually. You are younger, about thirty-four... no. It was fifty, wasn't it? Surely it was... no! You had to have been thirty-four. If you were fifty, why, you'd be nearly a hundred by now rather than the stately eighty four you are! The point being that you had already amassed a vast fortune primarily through guile and then secondarily through your brief marriage into the Crocker family. But most of your wealth was your own.

You bought the island and moved onto it, and began to build your tower. You wanted the most fanciful house you could think of, something woven out of dreams (you dreamed of towers... golden towers? How strange...)

You surveyed the place quite thoroughly when you first bought it, which was why you were shocked to find the underwater ruins near the long dormant volcano. You hired an underwater archeology team in the seventies to begin excavating it, raising it from the deeps, and then you spent quite a while with the best symbologists and anthropologists you could find. Eventually, you decoded the strange reptile glyphs within its walls.

To this day, you're still not entirely certain you understand. It seemed to be a creation myth, a hero's tale, something that stirred wonderful feelings within you.

It wasn't until the late eighties that you happened upon an idea on what to [i]do[/i] with your profound discovery. Why, it was simple! You'd break into this new 'game' business.

Of course, the technology for your vision didn't exist at the time, so you had to invent most of it. And that took you nearly twenty years. But you did it. And in 2009, your beta release was finally ready...

 ** > Bro: SHOCKING REVELATION **

**TWENTY FUCKING YEARS TO DEVELOP THIS FUCKING BETA!?**

You stare at the website in abject disbelief. You hope Dave can't see your totally unironic face. You'd never even HEARD of this game and the forums on Skaianet are abuzz with a chorus of 'fucking finally'. Something about this game changing the world as we know it.

 _Yeah fucking right._

You immediately compose two dozen ironic videos to put Yahtzee's review of Duke Nukem Forever to shame.

And yet. _And yet..._

Man, why the fuck not. You put in an order for the thing.

 ** > Lillian: Indulge your daughter. **

Of course. Always. Anything for Rose. Even if she resents it. Years ago when Hass first hired you, he also told you that he wanted to do something with these newfangled videogames. His joy is infectious, and so you decide that, well, Rose should have something fun to do with her friends. He talks of magic. He talks of mystery. He speaks of something to mirror the oldest tales of humanity, of Cambellian quest metaphors and creation myths. He says it's going to change everything.

You smile. You nod. You tell him that you know a few people you can work with, some game publishing companies and so on. You give him a list and eventually he decides to fund a small ragtag group of programmers. He names the company Skaianet.

You still like it best when he tells you the story he has in mind, and you help to refine it and oversee the production process.

Yes. This will be a wonderful gift to Rose.

You have no idea what you're getting yourself into.

 ** > James: Develop an interest in astronomy.**

You start because you want to be able to talk to Lillian about her work. You pick up Air and Space and Popular Science and Astronomy Today and your read some books and one day John gives you a hand. His friend has 'the best taste in music, the best!' and a few days later you get what John's friend calls 'boring ass creative commons electronica shit' which turns out to be a little group called Symphony of Science. You pass it along to her.

But then you start looking in the papers and you begin to find some peculiar things. Meteor impacts. Some in your very hometown! Peculiar indeed.

What's most peculiar is that the newspaper clippings about the largest ones are from thirteen years ago.

You don't remember any meteor impacts thirteen years ago. Much less one that you were a witness to. You'd think you'd remember something like that. You'd think.

 ** > Bro: Start taking gingko bibliola. **

Hahaha fuck no.

Except you do. You knock back those herbal supplement pills your mother gave you like no tomorrow. You're... forgetting things. Not little things, either. You're still on time to all your Djing gigs, you remember to upload the latest clips for Plush Rump and ship out a box of custom orders, you remember to take Dave to school on time. But someone asked you where you'd gone to school and for about thirteen seconds you stared at him, uncomprehending, before snapping your fingers and telling him the name.

But worse was when your mother called you and you spent four minutes arguing with her, explaining that she had the wrong number and you'd never met her before in your life.

You said a few things you regret, too. Thank god for chill hippie parents.

So you unscrew the cap, and you wash it all down with apple juice.


	3. Experiments

** > Lillian: Worry. **

Your ex husband calls and you can't remember his name. Oh, you know who the bastard is, but his name doesn't come to you and he angrily reminds you. It ends in shouting, as usual, and you nearly throw your cell phone across the room before going straight for the gin.

Rose stares at you, ghostlike, from the hall. You give her a warm smile and she glowers, backing away.

Ah. Teenagers.

Still. You don't know why these memories are fading. You schedule an appointment to be screened for Alzheimers, for dementia, for everything and anything. You can't fade now. Rose needs you. And for god's sake you're only forty.

You don't have time for this. The meteors you've tracked are going to destroy the Earth. You take your finding to Nasa and they laugh at you, they say they've found nothing. You become a Cassandra, practically screaming at them to listen, listen, _listen!_

No one listens.

You withdraw, then. Fine. You'll work on the game and you'll save your friends, if that's all you can do.

 ** > James: Fondly regard portrait of Elaine. **

You can't find her picture anywhere. There's a picture of your grandmother, Anna, instead. You panic, looking for it everywhere. You ask John, thinking maybe your son has pranked you, and he gives you an odd look and says that he hasn't seen it anywhere.

You sit down on the edge of your bed and realize that you can't remember what color her eyes were.

 ** > Bro: wonder what color your own eyes are.**

They're brown, dinkus. To be fair, they're a nice brown. But for fuck's sake they're brown, and they're not blue or green. _Brown._ Just 'cause you're strawberry blond doesn't mean you have green eyes. Plenty of gingers have brown eyes. Dave's eyes are the same, if a little lighter than yours.

 ** > Bro: Put on sunglasses **

What sunglasses? You don't wear sunglasses. Why the fuck would you wear sunglasses? You're already enough of a tool without them and you'd rather not. Sunglasses, you mean really.

So that's why it's a shock when you look in the mirror one morning and find that they've started to change color. Right now, they look amber. They look amber and even as you watch there's something liquid about them, something... wrong. Even as you watch your eyes deepen, alter, and change from amber to the color of blood.

You remember that your father put it down to some genetic defect and said that it was fine. You remember that you've always worn sunglasses because if you didn't people would stare, people would hurt you (before you learned to hurt them back, of course). You remember making your brother wear the same sunglasses. You remember picking out the most ridiculous ones you could find and there they are, by your right hand, sitting on the sink.

You remember Lillian saying that you had Mars' eyes.

You don't remember remembering any of this five minutes ago.

 ** > Hass: Reminisce about the war.**

What... what war? You were never part of either of the great wars, haha! Wait, first great war? You were born... before then? Or after? Jade asks you about your airship and you think yes, of course, you do have an airship!

Don't you?

Everything's so very confusing. But you are an old man, and this happens to old men. _War_. It's a dreadful thing. You do think you were involved in one, but you can't quite remember what you did in it now. You have no medals, after all.

There is now a collection of armor in your foyer, and you cannot recall how it got there.

 ** > Hass: Marvel at all this new STUFF! **

Your house is changing and filling with new delights every day. First there's the corpse of a horrible beast which just shows up in your basement. You teach Jade how to stuff it. You teach her to stuff the other dead things which start appearing out of nowhere. You take joy in the robots and the pictures and the teleporters and everything all around your abode. You are aware that these things weren't here before even if you can't remember obtaining them because this is all so very exciting!

Your airstrip floods that night and the next morning you can't remember ever having an airstrip. You had a pilot's license? How terribly silly! Wherever did you get that idea! And when did you go to Africa?

You begin to dream in chessboard patterns.

 ** > Lillian: Drink. **

You stare hollow-eyed at the glass tubes and green circutboards and your ever expanding basement. Your memory hasn't caught up with how this got here. But there's a teleporter. In your basement. There's a teleporter. This shouldn't be possible. Your fingers tremble as you lift the martini glass to your lips and you manage to break the damn thing.

How? You've never broken one before. Not once. Or... have you? You can't remember. Your memory feels full of holes. You can't remember your rat of an ex husband's name.

But you can remember Ambrose's.

 ** > James: Express fatherly concern.**

You sit on your son's bed as he sleeps and brush his hair back from his face. He looks so peaceful. So quiet.

But the walls speak differently. This is new and not new. You remember he's always done this. But no, he couldn't have. This must be new even if you remember it. How is that possible?

You think she would have found it funny. You don't at all. You worry. Mostly, you worry about John.

You just want him to grow up strong and brave. That's all.


End file.
